The agrarian myth, the ‘new’ populism and the ‘new’ right

It is argued here that the ‘new’ populism and the ‘new’ right, both of which emerged after the 1960s and consolidated during the 1990s, are structured discursively by the agrarian myth, and with it the reaffirmation of peasant essentialism. Whereas the earlier variants of the ‘new’ populism associated with the views of Marcuse and Fanon expressed fears about alienation involving the estrangement from an ‘authentic’ peasant selfhood, in the Thirdworldist discourse which the more recent and postmodern variants of the ‘new’ populism share with ‘new’ right this innate ‘peasant‐ness’ is represented ideologically as the recuperation of a cultural ‘otherness'/'difference’ that can now be celebrated. Alienation thus metamorphoses into its ‘other’, ‘peasant‐ness'‐as‐empowerment.